Editing David Atlee Phillips (section)

==CIA Career==
(1950–1975). In 1950, Phillips was recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) while in Chile, drawn by the prospect of covert action against perceived Soviet influence in Latin America. His 25-year CIA career, marked by significant operations and controversies, established him as one of the agency’s most prominent covert operatives.

Early Assignments (1950–1954): Phillips began as a contract agent in Chile, running informants and monitoring activities under diplomatic cover. By 1952, he was a full-time CIA officer, stationed in Guatemala City to gather intelligence on President Jacobo Árbenz’s government. His reporting on Árbenz’s land reforms.

Operation PBSuccess (1954): Phillips played a pivotal role in the CIA’s Operation PBSuccess, the 1954 coup to overthrow Árbenz. As chief of psychological warfare, under [[Tracy Barnes]] and alongside [[E. Howard Hunt]], Phillips orchestrated Radio Liberación, a clandestine station broadcasting from Honduras and Nicaragua. His propaganda—fake news, defection appeals, and exaggerated rebel advances—created panic, undermining Árbenz’s military and public support. The operation, detailed in declassified CIA documents (1997) and Phillips’s memoir The Night Watch (1977), succeeded in installing Carlos Castillo Armas, though it sparked Guatemala’s civil war (1960–1996). Phillips’s innovative use of radio earned him accolades, cementing his reputation as a psychological warfare expert.

Bay of Pigs Invasion (1961): Promoted to chief of propaganda for the CIA’s Cuban Task Force, Phillips planned the Bay of Pigs invasion to overthrow Fidel Castro. Stationed at the Quarters Eye command post in Washington, D.C., he managed [[Radio Swan]], broadcasting anti-Castro messages to Cuba. The invasion’s failure, due to CIA's poor planning, was a career setback, as Phillips recounts in The Night Watch. He later criticized President John F. Kennedy’s indecision, echoing Hunt’s sentiments in Give Us This Day (1973). Despite the debacle, Phillips’s propaganda skills kept him in high demand.

Mexico City Station Chief (1961–1965): As deputy chief and later chief of the CIA’s Mexico City station, Phillips monitored Soviet and Cuban activities, overseeing surveillance of embassies and operatives like Lee Harvey Oswald, who visited in September 1963. His tenure coincided with the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962), where he provided critical intelligence. Phillips’s handling of Oswald’s contacts, detailed in The Night Watch, has fueled conspiracy theories about his role in Kennedy’s assassination. Phillips denied such claims, testifying before the HSCA in 1976.

Latin American Operations (1965–1973): Phillips served in the Dominican Republic (1965), supporting U.S. intervention during the civil war, and in Brazil (1968–1970), monitoring resistance movements amid the CIA installed military dictatorship. As chief of the CIA’s Western Hemisphere Division (1970–1973), he oversaw operations in Chile, including efforts to destabilize Salvador Allende’s government, culminating in the 1973 coup orchestrated by the CIA. Phillips’s role in Chile, per The Pinochet File by Peter Kornbluh (2003), involved propaganda and funding anti-Allende groups, though he denied direct involvement in the coup.

Retirement and Advocacy (1975): Phillips retired in 1975, disillusioned by congressional scrutiny of CIA covert actions, particularly the Church Committee’s investigation into abuses. He founded the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO) in 1975 to defend the CIA’s mission, serving as its president and publishing the Periscope newsletter. His public advocacy countered critics like Philip Agee, whose Inside the Company (1975) exposed CIA operations.